Indigenous Studies

Mare's Nest unfolds in a world without adults, where Moon wanders through unfamiliar landscapes, encountering solitary figures who reveal alternative ways of living. Guided by a sage and his translator in a remote mountain hut, she seeks meaning amid uncertainty. Blurring documentary and fiction, the film reflects director Ben Rivers’s ongoing fascination with lives lived apart from mainstream society, following Moon’s quiet observations as she moves through this enigmatic realm toward an open, unknowable future.

WAYUMI

Wayumi is a cinematic journey across continents and generations, exploring what it means to belong. The film follows David Good and his Indigenous mother, Yarima, as they attempt to reunite a family separated for thirty years. Set against breathtaking landscapes and Venezuelan bureaucracy, their story becomes a meditation on resilience, cultural survival, and enduring ties. Drawing from hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage, Wayumi weaves an intimate family portrait spanning the jungles of Venezuela and the suburbs of New Jersey.

RIVER OF GRASS

River of Grass is an ode to the Florida Everglades, past and present, told through the prescient writings of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and those who call the region home. After a hurricane, Douglas appears in a dream, guiding filmmaker Sasha Wortzel into a layered exploration of the Everglades as ecosystem, history, and site of resistance amid climate collapse through encounters with Indigenous educators, activists, and multigenerational residents.

FLICKERING LIGHTS

In the remote hills of northeast India lies Tora, a Naga village long neglected by the state and shaped by decades of insurgency, where basic amenities are absent. Seventy years after independence, villagers hear that electricity may finally arrive, though skepticism runs deep. Khamrang, the village elder, doubts the promise, dreaming instead of sovereignty for his people. Jasmine, more pragmatic, sees hope and opportunity. Will electricity reach Tora—and will it deliver the joy it promises?

OZOGOCHE

In the Ecuadorian Andes, the Ozogoche community await the Cuvivíes, culturally celebrated birds who, inexplicably, migrate from North America annually to commit suicide in nearby lakes. However, it is the journey in reverse the Ozogoche people are now making more and more. With stunning photography, this film intertwines both of these journeys in a powerful metaphor about cultural identity, climate change, immigration and the fleeting beauty of the Ecuadorian highlands.

SUGARCANE

2025 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature. Sugarcane is a stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life. In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves was discovered on the grounds of an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada. After years of silence, the forced separation, assimilation and abuse many children experienced at these segregated boarding schools was brought to light, sparking a national outcry against a system designed to destroy Indigenous communities.

FOLLOW THE WATER

Demand for lithium, which is needed for the massive batteries of electric cars, is unprecedented. But what impact is this having on the environment and the people who live and work next to these lithium mines? In this timely and absorbing documentary, several protaganists talk about their connection to one of the largest lithium mines in the world: from the efforts of an indigenous woman fighting for water rights to new questions being raised by leading scientists.

SHORT FILMS BY THE YANOMAMI

The three short films in this series inaugurate the new audiovisual production of the Yanomami, one of the largest Indigenous groups living in Amazonia today. They are produced by Yanomami young people as part of a group specifically formed to disseminate their traditions and teachings to Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous people. The first film is made with the participation of the great leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa. The other two are the first to be directed by Yanomami women.

ANERCA, BREATH OF LIFE

Anerca is a fascinating exploration into the breathing techniques of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. There are two types of breathing, life-sustaining breath, and that which expresses existence. The film composes a poetic ethnography inspired by the singing, dancing, forms of contemporary existence and, above all, the vital breath of these nomad communities mistreated by history.

MALNI - TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE

A poetic documentary circling the origin of the death myth from the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, Małni follows two people as they wander through their surrounding nature, the spirit world, and something much deeper inside. Hopinka takes us on a journey through language and belief, offering a beautiful lesson about humanity’s place on this and other worlds, deceptively small and profoundly deep.

HENRY GLASSIE: FIELD WORK

The worldwide travels and unique cultural finds of renowned American folklorist Henry Glassie are enthrallingly chronicled in this portrait. Field Work allows us to witness the walling up of a massive kiln in Piedmont, North California, and features archival recordings of Glassie's encounters with carpet weavers and ceramicists in Western Turkey, and storytellers in Collins and Hogan's home country of Ireland, where Glassie's subjects reflect on their troubled present by talking about the past.

SWARM SEASON

The extinction of honey bees on a remote volcanic island of Hawaii, indigenous cosmology, and a secret NASA project intersect in this gorgeous, thought-provoking documentary. With an artist's eye for details and plenty of time for amazement, Swarm Season draws fascinating parallels between the micro- and macrocosm, and challenges our understanding of nature, the world and ourselves.

CABALLERANGO

In the Mexican village of Milpillas, deteriorating economic and social conditions have led to a wave of suicides among its young people. The remarkable new documentary Cabellerango, from filmmaker Juan Pablo González, examines one such case, relying on conversations with family members and townspeople to piece together the factors that led to this tragic incident, and in the process, reflect upon the changes occurring across much of the country.

SMALL PEOPLE, BIG TREES

Famed anthropologist Louis Sarno discovered the music of the Bayaka pygmies nearly 30 years ago and dedicated his life to their study and preservation. Following Sarno’s death in 2017, the filmmakers travelled to the rain forests of Central Africa to live with the Bayaka and provide a crucial ethnographic portrait of their cultures and traditions under seige from Western influence.

A RIVER BELOW

A captivating documentary about the ethics of activism in the modern media age, A River Below examines the efforts of two conservationists in the Amazon – one, a marine biologist, the other, an animal activist and host of a popular National Geographic TV show – whose methods to save the mythical pink river dolphin from extinction trigger unforeseen consequences.

WILD PLANTS

From urban farms in Detroit to Native-owned agriculture projects across the midwest to guerrilla gardens in Zurich, Wild Plants is a kaleidoscopic portrait of activists around the world who are creating their own botanic utopias.

KIVALINA

This tender portrait of an Inupiaq Eskimo community who are living on an island that is disappearing into the sea is both an elegy to the indigenous cultures of the Arctic and a harrowing vision of climate change in America.

LIVING WITH GIANTS

In a remote arctic village, a young Inuk boy's transition into adulthood becomes a quiet and devastating portrait of the issues facing the entire Inuit community in the outstanding documentary Living with Giants

THE ILLINOIS PARABLES

Filmmaker Deborah Stratman recounts eleven episodes in American history — from the violent eviction of the Cherokee to the invention of the nuclear reactor to the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton — to consider how societies are shaped by belief and ideology.

THE RIDE

This intimate, moving documentary follows young Lakota riders on a 300-mile trek on horseback through the South Dakota badlands, as they retrace the fateful journey of their ancestors that culminated at Wounded Knee.

MINERITA

An acclaimed, award winning documentary about the women of a remote mining town in Bolivia where life above ground is just as dangerous as below.

DAUGHTERS OF ANATOLIA

A singular portrait of a nomadic goat herding family whose livelihood and traditions are being threatened by an increasingly urbanized world.